Narcissistic Injury

Jeez, lady. Grow the ef up:

You see: I wasn’t afraid about what we were doing. I was afraid about what someone else might judge me for it—or worse, get me in trouble in some way for doing it.

I see a post by a woman “afraid about what someone else might judge me” at least once a day every day. For the most part, the things that evoke all this angst are beyond trivial. Yes, I gave my kid one and a half French fries from Wendy’s and before you judge me let me tell you an extremely long and convoluted story about the horrible life circumstances that made me do it! Yes, I let my kid watch cartoons for 10 minutes but before you condemn me as the worst parent ever, hear out my story of woe and hardship!

It’s a typical narcissistic desire to be noticed, to feel brave and transgressive, to be the center of attention, to pose and preen and self-exalt.

Like this:

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9 thoughts on “Narcissistic Injury”

One of the most beautiful sounds from this wave of teacher strikes is the absolute silence from the standardized testing, privatizing, teacher-bashing ed reform crowd, many of whom considered themselves progressives.

This is a real problem, though. People get arrested, have children taken away, etc., for this kind of thing. There was the woman who allowed her child to play alone in the fenced back yard while she was in the kitchen, and neighbors called police. There was the one who allowed her 9-year old to walk a few blocks down the street to the park, where her friends were also playing, and police were called. It’s nerve-wracking nowadays because things one was allowed to do as a child and that one considers normal, are not allowed.

SOME of the new rules are good. When I was 5 and my brother 3, my mother slammed on the brakes in the car with him standing in the front seat. He fell forward and cut his face on the ashtray, which was open because she was smoking. Nowadays he would have been safely in a car seat in the back, and she would not have been smoking. On the other hand, unsupervised play, going around neighborhoods on your bikes, etc., is no longer allowed and it’s actually an essential element in human development.

She’s so scared of police that she informs on herself in the most public way possible? This is not serious.

And I actually support the rule against leaving a 5-year-old alone at home because it was done to me and it wasn’t good.

The neighbors have an 6 and 8 year olds and they spend all day clattering around the neighborhood on their scooters. Nobody minds. Crowds of tweens with their toddler siblings are without parents on the playground. One or two isolated cases that get publicized precisely because they are rare don’t reflect the norm.

When I see how much freedom parents give to even very small kids on the playground, I stand in enormous admiration of this culture. In my country, mommies would already be tearing kids away from slides and bars for their “safety.”

Parental helicoptering is very dependent on social class or country of origin for immigrants. Immigrants who experienced totalitarianism will helicopter like there is no tomorrow because they are reproducing the oppressive structures that beat them down.

Poor families in the US seem a lot more helicoptering than the rich. Poor, however, doesn’t mean lumpenized. There is a world of difference between the two. I can’t imagine any helicoptering in lumpenized neighborhoods.

She could’ve let the 11 year old walk to school and then have him call on the cell phone [anyone can write a text] he undoubtedly has. Or just bundled both of them in the car she has to drop him off at the door, if she really thought it wasn’t safe for the kid to walk to school on his own.

I don’t know why she thought leaving the sick younger kid alone was the smart tradeoff. “Oh he’s fine, he has the Ipad” is about the same as “Oh he’s fine he has the tv.” Except it’s like she forgot all the stories of stranger danger we all got to learn about as children of the 1980s.

My brother and I would do things like stick potatoes in the vent, draw on the walls and put the car in reverse. Yes, the reason you have to have your foot on the brake before you switch gears is because of children like my brother.

One gets in legal trouble for letting their kid watch a cartoon show that’s, perhaps, a little “edgy”?
Or for giving their kid a french fry—or a cookie?
The “Nazis” and “Puritans” have truly taken over!! The “Inquisition” has been officially revived!!!!